Texas Style Beef Brisket

This past weekend, my best friend Patrick came up with his wife and daughter from South Carolina. While a North Carolina native, Patrick spent three years living right on the US / Mexican border in Laredo, TX. While there, he ate more Mexican food than he could ever possibly wish, and learned what a Mexican license plate looked like. Beyond the border patrol, the tumbleweeds, and the scathing Texas heat, Patrick did learn a little something about meat. That meat dear readers is Texas Beef Brisket, a hunk of semi-tough cow coming from the front, which, when smoked properly becomes and juicy and tender as any meat around.

Are you getting Hungry Yet?

Just a preface here – there are multiple styles of Texas Brisket. This includes the way it is cooked – over direct heat or in an indirect heat configuration, the seasoning and sauce used, and the type of wood used (most people think mesquite when thinking Texas Brisket). Despite this wide array, we are going to focus in on one particular style – something you may be less familiar with – Oak Smoking!

I was intrigued at the idea when Patrick told me he was bringing me some Oak for smoking the brisket. I’ve done brisket before, and I’ve used mesquite and it turned out quite well. To be honest, I’ve never cooked with Oak, though I have had Oak Brisket at Rudy’s Country Store and BAR-B-Q in Laredo.

The process began Friday night, after procuring the meat. The cut I had was a USDA Choice Angus Beef Brisket right around 5 lbs. I pulled the meat out and set it on the counter. I injected it with probably 6-8 ounces of Swanson beef broth. The broth began to slowly push out through some of the “cracks” in the muscle and it created a nice juicy sheen on the meat.

I spread all the overflowed broth over the brisket and then had Alicia my wonderful fiancé sprinkle my brisket rub on as I patted it into the cut. After a thorough rubbing in, the cut was ready to sit. I placed it back in the box to refrigerate overnight – for about 12 hours. This gives the rub a chance to work its way in a little bit, and the broth to penetrate additional areas inside the brisket.

I started the charcoal chimney a few minutes after 9am on Saturday. I set up the firebox for the minion method, and right at 10am, the coals were on, the smoker had normalized and I was able to throw the brisket on. The temperature never really moved from 225 because of my quick open and close, and the smoking had begun! We actually had some errands to run, so we headed out, returned around 11:30, the smoker was holding strong, so we headed to lunch to meet Patrick and Sarah.

We returned from lunch around 2pm, and the smoker was just starting to drop. It was at this point around 185 degrees – lower than I would normally like it to fall, but not too bad for not having been touched for four hours. I quickly grabbed some hot coals to start a new chimney. At this point, we also had the oak now, so we quickly split a couple of pieces to throw on to get the temp back up. With some careful damper modulation, the temp was quickly back up to 225 and holding until we could get the next chimney in.

Once the next chimney was on, it was basically smooth sailing. We’d pop out and check on the temperatures every hour or so, with basically nothing going on for us to do. What we did do in the meantime however was split the oak into chunks just small enough to fit into my minion box. Not having an axe at my house, Patrick had brought a little hatchet – but oak, dear friends, is a very hard wood, and a small hatchet was proving less useful than you might imagine.

So, the idea that quickly came to mind was to bury the hatchet – no pun there – and then drive it into the logs with my Wilton Sledgehammer. This worked amazingly well, better than an axe in fact because we were able to more accurately slice the size pieces of wood we wanted.

Once the wood was chopped – the process became something like this. Once the smoker would begin to taper off ever so slightly, we would prepare a new chimney, and while waiting for it to be ready, we would put in oak to stoke the temperature, keep it in our ideal range, and smoke the heck out of our brisket! We also would occasionally throw in some oak in between for two purposes; add flavor to our brisket, and watch the smoke roll out of the chimney with great satisfaction like small children. We were careful to not over smoke however.

Smoke Ring - The pink part!

At around 4pm we set the bad boy up with the Texas Crutch. The internal temperature was just a little shy of 180 degrees and truthfully, we were heading to Wedge Brewery for a couple cold ones in the mean time.

After some of the most delicious beer in Asheville, cart style Mexican snacks for all, and peanut shelling galore, we headed back to finish off the smoke. At this point, I wanted to make one final push on the temperature, so I tossed in a couple more oak logs and one final chimney of charcoal.

At right around 7:15, or 9 hours and 15 minutes after the brisket made its way onto the smoker initially, it was pulled off to let rest for about 30 minutes. I put it in the oven, still tightly wrapped in foil. I chose the oven because it was crappy outside, and with the oven off, it’s still a really great insulator.

Finally, the moment we had all been waiting for – the brisket came out of the oven and onto the carving board. Being careful to carve against the grain, I sliced in. The brisket had an INCREDIBLE smoke ring on it. I carved about 2/3 of the meat up, and we ate it on sandwiches, or on the side, with the Western NC style BBQ sauce – spicy or not depending on your taste. It's not Texas, but it's good!

Sliced Brisket Ready for Serving

Patrick actually had his sandwich double stacked with brisket, covered in sauce, with a handy helping of pickle slices on the bottom. This is how he ate them in Texas, so on my second sammy (I know, piggy, wint wint) I ate it that way as well. I will say, it was pretty good like this, though being from NC it just still doesn’t feel 100% kosher to have pickles mixed with any type of smoked meat. Maybe if we keep cooking brisket I’ll adopt it as my own.

Verdict of the day: Texas Crutch plus beef broth injections – my newest adjustments – made a huge difference, and this was the best brisket I’ve done yet, and one of the, if not the best briskets I’ve ever had. The other big difference: oak. The oak is hearty and imparts a distinct smokiness without being too heavy. For the amount we had in the smoker, it certainly was a “lighter” offering of smoke than other woods might have. I’ll definitely use it again, and may try mixing it with other woods.

I also want to give a shout out to meathead. I’ve learned a lot from reading his page on Beef Brisket, so if you’d like to learn more, I’d suggest you go check it out. His page is less narrative and more technical than mine and will give you some great info at Meathead's Texas Brisket Thanks for the read, come back soon!